She shook her head. “All this, we say all this after that boy’s family come here. They accused her, they call her ugly names, and, God forgive me, we all lied, we all say, no, Billy don’t come here. The grandfather, he was like the police, he listen to nothing, nothing I say, and he actually go into the bedroom, into the bathroom, checking to see if something is there from Billy. He says, if Billy comes here, if I hide him, he’ll deport me. Don’t you try, I tell him, because I am a U.S. citizen same as you, I belong in this country same as you.

“And the son, Billy’s father, he’s even worse, looking in my Bible, looking in the children’s books, like we have money we stole from them maybe—he even take my Bible and shake it all over the floor, so all my page markers come loose, but when they leave, Dios, what a fight I had with Josie then. How could she put us all at such risk and all for a boy. They’re like buses, I tell her, always another one will come along, don’t ruin your life, not like Julia here.

“She fights, she argues, she cries, but she don’t say she’s running away. Then in the afternoon, this boy, this Billy, shows up with a box of groceries, and Josie acts like he’s Saint Michael coming down from heaven, only then he left again, without her, and she sat all day like Julia, in front of the television, watching their telenovelas.”

I rubbed my head, trying to take in the torrent of information. “What about Julia? What does she say?”

“She says she knows nothing. Those two, they fight day and night now, not like before, before María Inés. Then they were so close, you think they were one person sometimes. If Josie has a secret, she don’t say nothing to Julia about it.”

“I’d like to ask her myself.”

Rose protested, halfheartedly: Julia would be asleep, and she was too angry with Josie to know anything.

Mr. Contreras patted her hand. “Victoria here won’t say nothing to upset your girl. She’s used to talking to young people. You just sit down and tell me about this beautiful little girl here. She’s your grandkid, huh? She’s got your beautiful eyes, don’t she?”

His reassuring rumble followed me as I picked my way through the tightly packed dining room to the girls’ bedroom. The skin prickled at the back of my neck, knowing the two boys were lying under the table watching me.